twisted memories
My 2 cents on how I currently think about solo endings:
When I first started the game I wanted to go about the harem and the solo endings a bit different than most games I myself played so far tend to do it. The MC was supposed to actively pursue a harem and then get get put to the test, the choice before him: Risk the second chance he got in hope to form his harem or take it with one girl he can be sure of that he can life a happy life with. Accordingly I've been trying to build up every girl to get into a position to fit for the later BEFORE giving the player the choice to reject her. I do like to think that I've been doing a decently good job at that but the more I've been doing this dev thing the more I've started to see other problems with my initial idea.
First: A story telling reason. Writing break ups for 5+ girls that feel appropriate to the build up of their relationships that came before seems increasingly challenging to me and this many break ups will probably get pretty old, pretty fast.
I could of course do it in narration only accompanied by a time skip but that again brings multiple problems in my mind: 1. It wouldn't be satisfying, 2. It would heavily disconnect the story lines forcing me to write 7+ paths at the same time, or 3. If I were to do it in a prologue kind of way where to choice for a girl is directly followed with her ending it would make the solo routes end way earlier than the harem route as I'm sure as hell not going to do a “harem is formed, game is ending” kind of harem ending.
Second: The amount of work it would require. When I planned the game at first I was very conscious about doing it in such a way that I could actually manage to finish it. Still, planning something like this without ever having done it and actually doing it are two entirely different pair of shoes. Neither is it helping that the effort that goes into the game went up drastically over the time of the development or that I was still studying and had a lot of free time when I started this project that I no longer have (The advice generally given to new devs to start with a small project has its merits but its hard to overcome ones own ambition).
Third: I always wanted this to be a tight-knit story with a lot of character each of which can stand on their own and only gets elevated by being forced to bounce off each other through this harem-building setting. But, the more I've been doing it this way the harder it seems to me to actually untangle all of this again to make satisfactory solo endings possible.
All in all the way I see it now and if I were able to start over it would probably have been better to either give the player the choice to pursue a girl right from the get to, or to go full force into the harem-building aspect of things making the choices not about who is part of the harem but instead the way it is build and the dynamics within. At least I think those would make for more clear cut paths that can still be interesting but such realizations come with experience especially if you try to be a snowflake in the market of harem avn's.
In the end its a miscalculation by me and even though I still like the idea of solo endings very much as I truly think every one of the main girls would be deserving of one, I would hate not to be able to bring the game to a satisfactory end even more. And having done this for a few years now (although I still feel like a new dev), knowing how much time this takes up and seeing how the story so far developed I'm simply getting increasingly worried that by making solo endings I will end up not being able to deliver either.
簡單黎講,發得太大係多數devleoper通病,更新得愈耐就愈怕會爛尾,因為你永遠唔知更新時間拖到咁長係現實未來會發生咩事
